This page catalogues the changes made to this website in 2007. See the
main catalogue page for more recent changes.
5 Jan 2007
the site was mentioned on Simon Loekle's "Year Out Wake" radio
program on WBAI; an MP3 recording is available on the
thinkamalinks page
12 Jan 2007
added volume 32 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
19 Jan 2007
added Van Hulle's "Joyce & Beckett Discovering Dante" to the
bibliography page
changed occurrences of the theoretically-confusing 'St'
abbreviation within the collection into either 'Saint' or 'Street'
26 Jan 2007
added issue 4 of the "Genetic Joyce Studies" periodical to the
bibliography page
added two shorthands to the "Diacritics" brevity on the
search engine page: (Ā, Ó)
2 Feb 2007
added five shorthands to the "Books" and "Diacritics" brevities on
the search engine page:
("Scottish Clans", Ellis, Jabotinsky, Paget) + (Ă)
9 Feb 2007
added "The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo: Notebook VI.B.32"
to the bibliography page
added the "VI.B.32" shorthand to the "Notebooks" brevity on the
search engine page
16 Feb 2007
added the not-so-useful "Get Following" option to the
search engine page, through which one
may ask the search engine to retrieve, for each elucidation found,
the following elucidation within the collection (more details may
be found under Get Following
on the user's manual page)
moved the "Sort Alphabetically" option to a different row of
options on the search engine page
redid the shorthands of the "Chapter" brevity on the
search engine page to offer the expected
number of 17 shorthands as well as to work somewhat faster
23 Feb 2007
completely redesigned the algorithms behind the "Ignore Accent"
option on the search engine page, so that
when it is on it now runs virtually as fast as when it is not;
therefore, it is now on by default
added labels to the shorthands of the "Diacritics" brevity on the
search engine page
after sixteen months of slow ascent, Fweet made it, quite
possibly temporarily, to the bottom of the first page of Google
when searching for Finnegans Wake; as of February 17, when
one performs a search for Finnegans Wake on different search
engines, Fweet is located at #7 on Google, #8 on Netscape,
#9 on AOL, #10 on Altavista, #11 on Yahoo, #15 on Dogpile, #32 on
Ask, #36 on MSN, and #37 on A9 — the next milestone, probably
not achievable in the upcoming year, is to be #4 on www.google.com,
just above the three-entry "advertisement" for a similarly-named
Philadelphia pub
2 Mar 2007
added three shorthands to the "Books" brevity on the
search engine page: (Fay, Harris,
Hunt)
7 Mar 2007
added issue 5 of the "Genetic Joyce Studies" periodical to the
bibliography page
listed on the The Analyst page a few
issues of The Analyst I have for sale
the performance of the search engine has again deteriorated
dramatically through no fault of mine; I am therefore working to
move the site to another hosting service in the upcoming week
— I apologise for any inconvenience this move may cause, but
hopefully it may be rewarded by a significantly better long-term
performance
14 Mar 2007
after seventeen months in which Fweet had been hosted on the
web servers of Netfirms, it has now moved to those of the
cuter-named Hostpapa, which promises to offer a significantly
faster performance of the search engine, hopefully
17 Mar 2007
added to the results page, when searching for a given page of
Finnegans Wake, links to the previous and to the next page,
in order to simplify browsing of the elucidations on a page-by-page
basis
23 Mar 2007
added volume 33 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
added two shorthands to the "Languages" and "Motifs" brevities on
the search engine page: (Pular) + (So
pass the fish for Christ sake, Amen)
updated the division into subsections of the "Synopsis" feature
(accessible through the "Synopsis" shorthand in the "Editorials"
brevity on the search engine page) to
better match the subdivision presented in Appendix 1 of Crispi
and Slote's How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake (still differing
for sections II.1.6, II.2.3 to II.2.8, and II.3.6)
30 Mar 2007
expanded the Yahoo Groups section of the
thinkamalinks page
removed two shorthands from the "Languages" brevity on the
search engine page (Hawaiian, Pular), as
no elucidations use them any more
6 Apr 2007
added issues 2, 3 and 4 of volume 1 of "A Finnegans Wake
Circular" to the bibliography page
rather active discussion of Fweet has been going on in the
"Prankquean" group on Yahoo Groups (accessible through the
thinkamalinks page, if one decides to
join the group)
13 Apr 2007
changed the behaviour of the search engine when both the "Sort
Alphabetically" and "Get Following" options are on, from performing
the latter first and the former second, to doing the
hopefully-more-useful reverse (if anyone would like to have an
option added which allows one to use the old behaviour, please let
me know)
19 Apr 2007
added issue 6 of the "Genetic Joyce Studies" periodical to the
bibliography page
27 Apr 2007
added volume 34 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
3 May 2007
added issues 1-11 of the "The Analyst" periodical to the
bibliography page
10 May 2007
crossed the 77,000-elucidation mark
26 May 2007
added one shorthand to the "Motifs" brevity on the
search engine page: (Stop, please
stop...)
1 Jun 2007
changed the resolution of the reported "search duration" and
"search and display duration" on the results page from whole
seconds to milliseconds
in a futile attempt to minimise incoming spam mail, I have changed
all the email addresses of the Fweet website, invalidating
all previous addresses; I can still, of course, be contacted
through the "Comment on Me!!" facility
8 Jun 2007
added a preliminary "Articles in Non-Joycean Periodicals" section
to the bibliography page (thanks to
Harold Ryan)
15 Jun 2007
added one shorthand to the "Classics" brevity on the
search engine page: (Dickens)
added a new feature entitled "Tip of the Month" to the monthly
messages sent on the Fweet mailing list (if you are not yet
subscribed to the mailing list and wish to be, you may subscribe
through the comment on me page)
22 Jun 2007
added one shorthand to the "Books" brevity on the
search engine page: (Thom's (3rd))
29 Jun 2007
added Boyle's article on Fishing in Finnegans Wake to the
bibliography page
6 Jul 2007
added one shorthand to the "Clusters" brevity on the
search engine page: (Bridges in Paris)
9 Jul 2007
as quite a few of you have noticed, Fweet, for the first
time since its inception, has been inaccessible for an extensive
period of time (almost 24 hours) on Sunday and Monday, 8-9 July;
I would like to apologise to all of you who have come to depend on
it for their daily dose of wakese; I will try to ensure this does
not happen again; it has occurred through what seems to have been
an error of judgement on the part of the technical support of
Hostpapa (Fweet's current hosting service), who, for
reasons which are still not quite clear to me, thought that I may
be "running commands I should not be able to run" and unilaterally
suspended my account; needless to say, I have done no such thing,
but it seems it is more difficult – and time-consuming
– to prove one's innocence than to provoke the ire of people
with power; I am not sure if I should stay with Hostpapa (forgive
and forget) or move to another hosting service, and I will evaluate
the options in the near future; again, my apologies
13 Jul 2007
added the displaying of the current saved default, just below the
options on the search engine page
added comments about Safari for Windows 3.0 beta and Netscape 9.0
to the four browsers page
20 Jul 2007
added volume 35 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
added Reynolds's "Joyce and Dante" to the "Portions of Books"
section of the bibliography page (thanks
to Michael Farrell)
27 Jul 2007
added one shorthand to the "Books" brevity on the
search engine page: (Blavatsky)
by popular request, changed the "Anglo-Irish" shorthand in the
"Registers" brevity on the search engine
page to "Anglo-Irish/Hiberno-English"
3 Aug 2007
added Lernout's "James Joyce, Reader" to the
bibliography page
added at the very bottom of the results page a direct link to the
"Search Engine" page, to allow you to get back to that page without
the need to go through a potentially-long succession of clicks on
the "Back" button; note, however, that if you use this link instead
of the "Back" button you will reach a brand new instance of the
"Search Engine" page, rather than the one you had last used (i.e.
default options, empty search string), which might lead to some
confusion
10 Aug 2007
added a tips page to hold the "Tips of
the Month" published in the monthly email newsletter, accessible
from the search engine page
17 Aug 2007
added volume 36 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
added details of a forgotten issue (number XXVI) to the
The Analyst page, as kindly reported by
Edward Burns
24 Aug 2007
with Fweet now having three very dedicated contributors
(Clifford Marcus, Harold Ryan and Michael Farrell), who are quite
active reading books and articles about Finnegans Wake and
proofreading existing elucidations, I spent most of the week
incorporating their suggestions into the collection
31 Aug 2007
added Harrington's "James Joyce: Suburban Tenor" to the
bibliography page
6 Sep 2007
reprogrammed some portions of the hint system to produce slightly
more correct and slightly more helpful hints when a search results
in zero elucidations
16 Sep 2007
added volume 37 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
the site is two years old (according to the Jewish calendar)
added one shorthand to the "Motifs" brevity on the
search engine page: (Tom/Tim)
added Moholy-Nagy's "Vision in Motion" to the "Portions of Books"
section of the bibliography page (read by
Harold Ryan)
28 Sep 2007
over the past few weeks Clifford Marcus has tirelessly proofread
all of Fweet's Italian elucidations (of which there are more
than a thousand), offering numerous corrections and improvements,
which I was only too glad to accept
5 Oct 2007
added two shorthands to the "Classics" brevity on the
search engine page: (Ibsen (x2))
moved one shorthand from the "Books" brevity to the "Classics"
brevity on the search engine page: (O.
Henry)
added Callaghan's "That Summer in Paris" to the "Portions of Books"
section of the bibliography page (read by
Harold Ryan)
12 Oct 2007
the site is two years old (according to the Gregorian calendar),
with over 63,000 searches run
for its second anniversary, Fweet has received a wonderful
birthday gift — on this week, Harold Ryan has finished
reading Christiani's "Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans
Wake" (added to the bibliography
page) and extracting elucidations from it, thus becoming the first
person, other than myself, to read an entire book (devoting to it
almost four months) into the Fweet collection; thank you!
Fweet's second year has seen some changes — a move to
a new and faster hosting service (an average search now takes only
700 milliseconds and many take as little as 350 milliseconds); some
decrease in the amount of time I devote to maintaining and updating
the site (though not as marked a decrease as I had expected a year
ago); a concomitant increase in the involvement of others, both
those that occasionally contribute a few new or improved
elucidations, and those that are more committed and actually
proofread whole sections of the collection, or read books and
articles about Finnegans Wake and digest them into
elucidation format — alongside a steady rise in the number of
website pages, sources, shorthands, elucidations (some 1,800 new
ones this year), and visits to the site (about 100-200 visits a day
every day – not half-bad for a website about a book nobody
reads)
in the spirit of getting even more people involved, I have yet
again completely rewritten the
volunteering your help page, in order to
advertise for proofreaders, readers, scanners and bibliographers
(if you are interested, more details can be found on that page)
started adding one-line descriptions under the "Personal
Contributions" section of the
bibliography page (contributors: if you
would like to add your own descriptive one-liner (along the lines
already exemplified by a few brave souls) or update an existing one
(as many times as you wish), please just send me a comment)
reprogrammed a portion of the search engine so that now beautified
shorthands on the results page (i.e. the various italicised
languages, books, motifs, clusters, &c.) appear as hypertext
links, that, when clicked upon, invoke a new search for that
specific shorthand (this new feature covers all types of
shorthands, except diacritics, editorials, notebooks and sigla)
added Jolas's "Man from Babel" to the
bibliography page (read
by Michael Farrell)
a bit of useful trivia about what Fweet is really about,
according to Google — if you search for "Finnegans Wake" on
Google, Fweet comes up only around number 9; however, if you
search for "separation of watery part of milk", Fweet is way
up there at number 2
26 Oct 2007
extended last week's new feature (i.e. beautified shorthands being
hypertext links) to include notebooks and sigla too
added two shorthands to the "Diacritics" and "Sigla" brevities on
the search engine page: (Á) + (all
sigla)
split the "VI.B.6+49c" shorthand in the "Notebooks" brevity on the
search engine page into two separate
shorthands: (VI.B.6, VI.B.49c)
the site was mentioned in Tim Conley's review of the third edition
of McHugh's Annotations to "Finnegans Wake" (James Joyce
Quarterly, volume 44, number 2, page 365; this issue was just
published but bears a Winter 2007 date); after a rather scathing
review of McHugh's book, which mentions the need for a new paradigm
for annotations, it reads: "Raphael Slepon's website,
"Finnegans Wake" Extensible Elucidation Treasury, still in
its early stages of development, is a decent if unpolished example
of what might be done.9 Besides offering
the word-search function, which makes concordances seem both a
waste of physical space and lexically stodgy (who needs whole words
when you can search by patterns of letters?), the site's potential
range of annotations is obvious within a few moments' browsing."
this is a good opportunity to remind us all that without McHugh's
work, Fweet would not have existed at all, or at least
would have been extremely reduced in scope
as for Conley's comment about Fweet being "decent if
unpolished", perhaps some of Fweet's users in Poland could
help make it a bit more Polish; I am sure I can manage, all by
myself, to make it quite indecent, if it is not already so
a bit of useful trivia about what Fweet is really about,
according to Google — if you search for "Finnegans Wake" on
Google, Fweet comes up only around number 9; however, if you
search for "how to pronounce raphael", Fweet is way up there
at number 1
2 Nov 2007
added two shorthands to the "Books" brevity on the
search engine page: (Aston, Evans)
in a futile attempt to minimise incoming spam mail, I have changed
all the email addresses of the Fweet website, invalidating
all previous addresses; I can still, of course, be contacted
through the "Comment on Me!!" facility
9 Nov 2007
added issue 7 of the "Genetic Joyce Studies" periodical to the
bibliography page
a bit of useful trivia about what Fweet is really about,
according to Google — if you search for "Finnegans Wake" on
Google, Fweet comes up only around number 19; however, if
you search for "hamlet shorthand", Fweet is way up there
at number 1
16 Nov 2007
somewhat changed the "Speaker", "Synopsis" and "Variants"
shorthands (under the "Editorials" brevity on the
search engine page) to make them
slightly more accessible
corrected a bug associated with the "Sort Alphabetically" option
which resulted in improper sorting in some cases
updated the comments about Safari for Windows 3.0 in the
four browsers page; briefly, version
3.0.4 suffers from a serious bug, rendering the entire shorthand
system useless (I do not plan to look for a solution to this
problem, unless someone reports that he or she is actually using
this browser)
23 Nov 2007
added volume 38 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
added one shorthand to the "Clusters" brevity on the
search engine page: (Racing and Sport)
(thanks to Bud Nathans)
a bit of useful trivia about what Fweet is really about,
according to Google — if you search for "Finnegans Wake" on
Google, Fweet comes up only around number 19; however, if
you search for "john jameson three star whiskey", Fweet is
way up there at number 1
30 Nov 2007
added volume 39 of the "James Joyce Quarterly" periodical to the
bibliography page
incorporated numerous corrections to the Italian and German
elucidations, as kindly supplied by Giovanna Forni (thanks Jo)
a bit of useful trivia about what Fweet is really about,
according to Google — if you search for "Finnegans Wake" on
Google, Fweet comes up only around number 19; however, if
you search for "ezra pound black christ", Fweet is way up
there at number 3
7 Dec 2007
added two shorthands to the "Clusters" and "Diacritics" brevities
on the search engine page: (Radio) +
(ŭ)
13 Dec 2007
added a sources page to collect in one
place electronic editions of some (currently, 26) of the source
books used by Joyce in Finnegans Wake, accessible from the
search engine page
added asterisks to those books under the "Books" brevity on the
search engine page that have an
electronic edition on the sources page
made some changes to the context-specific help system on the
search engine page in order to bypass
new bugs in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2; the
most visible change is the location of the help window (if its
new location is a problem or you would like to see an option that
allows you to choose its location, please let me know)
made some changes to the shorthand system on the
search engine page in order to bypass a
new bug in Safari for Windows (and probably for Macintosh
too) which rendered the shorthand system inoperative (mentioned
before, on 16 November)
28 Dec 2007
crossed the 78,000-elucidation mark
somewhat changed many of the shorthands under the "Classics",
"Joyce" and "Shakespeare" brevities on the
search engine page to make them
slightly more accessible